Now at 45m members, LinkedIn rival Viadeo lands $32m to spur growth in Europe, emerging countries

For most people, online social networking in a purely professional context is almost synonymous to ‘using LinkedIn‘, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only business social network in town. Many countries have local networking sites for professionals, and a handful of companies are trying to compete with LinkedIn on a global level, including XING and Viadeo.

The latter was started in France back in 2004, but has expanded to other countries – mostly by acquisition – over the past few years, and has managed to attract over 45 million registered users to date.

For the record, that’s still a far cry from the more than 150 million members (in over 200 countries and territories) claimed by LinkedIn.

But Viadeo says 1 million new members join the online business network every month, so it’s not that it’s not seeing growth. The company claims over 3 million profiles are viewed, and 150,000 new connections made, on Viadeo every day.

Today, Viadeo is announcing a $32 million round of funding to boost growth in more regions across the globe, particularly in Europe and emerging markets like China (with Tianji.com as its local brand), Latin America, India, Africa and, from last December, Russia.

Viadeo has confirmed that one third of the funds (more than $10 million) will be given to Tianji itself. Viadeo’s arm in China is performing well, with 10 million members to date, and the revenue will help it develop towards the 100 million member target it is aiming to reach by 2013.

Source : thenextweb

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